Websites for OCTRU Trials

Hip fracture is a serious injury which mostly occurs in older patients. In the UK there are more than 70,000 hip fractures every year. A hip fracture is a potentially catastrophic event; approximately 30% of patients will die during the first year following this injury and those that survive will have a significant reduction in their quality of life.

The most common type of hip fracture is treated with a partial hip replacement or ‘hemiarthroplasty’. The hemiarthroplasty can be fixed to the patient’s thigh bone with or without the use of ‘bone cement’. Cement is the current standard technique, but there are some risks with bone cement which could be avoided by using ‘uncemented’ implants. These risks prompted a recent alert from the National Patient Safety Agency.

However, traditionally the outcomes with the early types (first generation) of uncemented implants were inferior to the cemented implants currently used. Since these studies were done, there have been significant improvements in uncemented implant technology and the current, limited evidence suggests that these modern (contemporary) implants may be as good as the cemented implants but without the risks of using cement.

The research needed is a trial to compare cemented with uncemented hemiarthroplasty implants. In order to find out which type of implant is better for patients with hip fracture, we first need to undertake a smaller feasibility study (this work). This will establish the feasibility of running such a trial and gain vital data to determine how many participants we will need to, and be able to, recruit in the full trial to answer this important research question.